IHIP News - EXCLUSIVE Senator Warren Goes TOE TO TOE with Elon Musk

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

EXCLUSIVE Interview with Senator Elizabeth Warren on her new plan for Elon Musk and DOGE. Pre-order our new book, join our Patreon Cult, and more by clicking here: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcast. Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ5cvDR2HhVUcdVoTvvQKLw/joinSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It is only Thursday in America's longest week that we've had in quite some time. And so many insane things have been said, and even more insane things have been done, that there's one thing we haven't really given that much attention to, and it's this little clip right here. Kylie, please play the clip. And we're going to take Doge to Mars. Okay. I think we're going to have to have somebody explain to us, like we're five years old,

how you can be an efficient spender while at the same time taking that department of efficient spending to the planet of Mars. This is above my pay grade. Is it above yours, Pumps? Yes. It doesn't make any sense. So what we're going to do is we're going to bring in the great Senator Elizabeth Warren to enlighten us about this craziness that is going on. Hello. Hello, Senator. Oh, it's so good to see the two of you. It's great to see you too. Did you see the clip that we played? I saw the clip. Let's talk a little Doge. Does that make any sense to you? Taking the Department of Government Efficiency to Doge? I'm not in government, but I would think it would be NASA that would do such a thing.

And remember, Department of Government Efficiency is about spending less money. Right. So spending less money to go to Mars, I actually think it's probably cheaper to stay here. So if we wanna go to Mars, and I get it, Mars may be a good idea, but we're actually gonna have to spend some money for that. So let's talk about our favorite thing, money. Okay, so Elon has proposed initially $2 trillion cut, and then there's been some backpedaling. And now I think, I mean, now he's talking about going to Mars, but there is a really

valid issue, regardless if you're a Republican or Democrat, about government spending, because it's my understanding that sometimes if the person writing the invoice knows that the buyer is the U.S. government, there could be some overbilling. Oh, yeah. So you want a couple of examples? Yes. Okay. All right. So let's do a quiz. I'm going to do this one. I'll give you an example just to keep the math simple on this. All right. So I want you to envision in your mind a 99 cent soap dispenser. Not the fancy one, right? The 99 cent one. Okay. You go in to maybe the dollar store, you buy the 99 cent soap dispenser. Same soap dispenser. How much does the federal government get billed for that soap dispenser? Come on, give me a guess. I would say $1.50, $3. $3. How about Yup. Yup. Yup. Is this widespread? So it just crops up in all kinds of places. We

got another little clip that costs less than 5 cents. Government pays $70 for it. And here's the thing. That stuff is just sprinkled through like pepper in your vegetable soup. It's just kind of everywhere. And the Department of Defense, because that's where I started on this, the Department of Defense is the only branch of government that literally has never passed an audit. So these are the guys spending money, spending money, spending money. And part of what I've said to Mr. Musk is you really want to doge it up out there, have at it.

But let's start over here by changing the practices around how we do contracting with these private contractors who just rub their little hands together and say, whoa, federal government is paying, then I'm going big on the price tag. We can fix that and we can save about $200 billion over the next 10 years. There's an opener. So this reminds me of, I believe it was a Time Magazine article that came out like five or six years ago. And the billing, you know, those little cups that you put your pills in that the nurse brings to you. Hospitals were paying something insane, like $50 or something for a little paper cup. So this seems to be kind of a systemic problem, this kind of

profiteering. And when you have somebody, it's like insurance agency. I mean, the healthcare industrial complex seems to do this. And then you have the military industrial complex that seems to do this. Do your colleagues across the aisle, is this something that you think they would think was equally egregious as you do? I actually do. I think we've got a chance to pull in Democrats and Republicans. I started with Department of Defense and just said, I'm not talking about cutting out programs and so on. I'm just saying, change your contracting promises.

You know, the practices, you know, the green eye shade stuff. Let's just change that and save a couple of hundred billion dollars. Let me give you another one though, in healthcare. Did you know now that about half of all seniors have been sucked into, instead of staying on Medicare, which works pretty well, they've got something called Medicare Advantage. Okay. And what that is, is that's the privatized version of Medicare.

And it's run by private for-profit companies. And they did the same thing. They said, whoa, federal taxpayers are going to pay for this. Let's go big. And the way they go big here is that they have some ways to manipulate the billing and they do a lot of denial of service. Even though the law says you have to provide everything Medicare does, they turn you down on drugs, they turn you down on when you can get your knee surgery, whatever it is. As a result, independent, not partisan group has looked at it and said just last year that those Medicare Advantage private insurers ripped off American taxpayers for about $83 billion in one year. Another independent group looked at it and said, no, no, no, no, no. You've got that totally wrong. It was $140 billion that they ripped off. So think about that. Over 10 years, there's a

trillion dollars right there. There are things we could do to reduce costs. And that's the way we ought to go about it. These giant corporations that aren't just picking your pocket anymore. They're taking taxpayers, turning them upside down and shaking all of the money they can out of your pockets. We could put a stop to that. Pumps. I was wondering, I'm unclear on how Doge is going to function. Will there be congressional oversight? Will it be something that you as a senator go with Elon Musk and you discuss these things? Or does he just say, here's the cut and Trump signs it? So what's the level of oversight on Doge and Congress interaction with it?

Well, you are right to be confused about that because at this point, there's no information on what's going on here. In fact, if they actually had a government office, I'd go over there and talk to them. The problem is there's nobody except evidently Elon Musk running this out of his hip pocket and whoever it is, he's decided to bring it on the game. So that's why I sent him a letter. And I said, hey, do you really want to cut money out of where we're spending? Do you really want to make government more efficient? I got a plan for that. Here are 30 different items you can cut and you can save more than $2

trillion on those cuts alone. And it starts right where you did. I think this is important because it was Elon Musk who started out and said, we're going to save $2 trillion on the cuts we're going to make. Great. And then a short time later, he says, we're going to save $1 trillion on the cuts we're going to make. Whoa, whoa. Then a little while later, he says, we're going to save a half a trillion dollars.

So we're going from two to one to a half. And what I'm saying to him is, yo, don't chicken out. You don't have to cut back and cut back on your numbers. Here's a whole list where you could save $2 trillion. You just got to have the courage to take on the defense contractors, the private insurance industry, the pharmacy benefit managers, the people who are gouging American taxpayers. That's all. And I would imagine once he adds that trip to Mars, that would be virtually impossible to even save a dollar, much less half a trillion, one or two trillion. But I want to shift gears slightly with Elon Musk in the news since the inauguration. You probably saw that on stage when he gave the Doge goes to Mars speech, he did

a back-to-back Nazi salute. And there is this feeling among the Democratic base, Senator, that like, how friendly can we be with these people? Like, how are you as a senator going to manage this incoming, never before seen style of American government that's pretending like it's for freedom, but is clearly only for the oligarchy that has a lot of fascist and authoritarian undertones and quite frankly, overtones? Yeah. Well, we start by calling out what's wrong and what Elon Musk did was wrong. It's not, oh, let's play around with this. Let's dance around. It's not, it's wrong. But let's also watch what they're doing. Remember how we started with that $2 trillion in government efficiency, and all of a sudden it's a trip to Mars, and let's talk about this,

and let's talk about that, and let's go somewhere else. No, I actually think we got to hold these guys down. And say, for example, Donald Trump ran on cutting costs for American families. And American families told us in this election, we want somebody on our side. We want somebody who's going to cut costs. Okay. So Donald Trump, Elon Musk, what do they do? What does Donald Trump do in these first days? He signs his executive orders and says he's going to do pardons for everybody involved in the insurrection.

Okay. I'm still waiting to see how that's bringing down the price of eggs at the grocery store or helping bring down housing costs or healthcare costs. He says he's going to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Okay. I'm still, I'm listening, right? I'm waiting for this. He says he's going to go take back the Panama canal. I think what we've got to worry about here is that they flood the zone with some really hateful stuff and some just really weird stuff. Yeah. And we're kind of left to say, not that, not that, not that. Look, you want to talk about money? I'm your gal. Let's go. You want to say you want to do more efficiency in government? Let's go. I've got serious proposals here, thoughtful proposals, ways that we could cut $2 trillion out of our federal spending. So let's have the

courage to do it. Let's hold these guys accountable. And when they do really awful things, let's make it clear, there's still plenty of us who will stand up and say, that is wrong. It is wrong. It is wrong. It is wrong. So I think a lot of people, I mean, again, I said at the top of the episode, it's only Thursday and this is a very exhausting man. It's an exhausting form of government, but I think there is this national feeling of, can you guys hold the line? Are we going to be okay? And it's a real, it's like right under my skin all the time. Like, oh God, holy shit. Are we going to make it? Are we going to be okay? And so what do you have to tell the American people pepper all over the United States?

Are we going to be okay, Senator? Are we, can you and your colleagues hold the line and get us to 2026? Look, we are strong when we are together and we stay in the fight. We are not here to roll over and play dead. We are not here to say, oh, there's just too much. We're not here to say, oh, it's too hard. I grant it is tough i grant it is scary and think about what it's like for some families out there who really see everything they've tried to build very much at risk i get all that but understand our strength is that we stay in the fight together. I want you to understand this. At this moment, I feel energized.

I feel energized because Donald Trump, the Republicans over in the House, the Republicans in the Senate, and Elon Musk have laid out a whole bunch of stuff that is truly a betrayal of what they told the American people. So our job is to point that out and to hold them back. And that's what we're going to do.

You know, I love it. We say, you know, the first Trump term, we called it the resistance. Pops and I are now calling this one the rebellion. We will be rebels. We are going to rebel. And so I ask all of our listeners and all of our viewers to join us in the rebellion. We will be rebels. We are going to rebel. And so I ask all of our listeners and all of our viewers to join us in the rebellion. Senator Warren, we love having you on. We have Oklahoma ties with you. And if you will let all of your rational, sane colleagues know

that IHIP News is always a place for them to come message because people are scared, but we need to hear that. I like that you're energized. I feel energized after having spoken to you and take Elon Musk to the mat. I know you can do it. You bet. Let's do this. Thank you. Thank you, Senator.